Spanish boy refugees. Photo: the Friends House Library.
Fleeing fascism
Rose Holmes looks back at the British Quaker response to the European refugee crisis 1933-1945
History allows us the luxury of hindsight. In 1933, when fascism began to spread across the borders of Europe, few people realised the urgent need to enable refugees to flee fascist oppression. The Religious Society of Friends took an early lead in establishing programmes across Europe for refugee relief and rescue.
Based on the success of Quaker famine relief programmes in Germany and Austria following the first world war, which had fed up to one million people a day, British and American Quakers were able to offer support to early victims of Nazi persecution. It quickly became apparent that, following the election of Hitler in January 1933, support was needed for Jews and political dissidents.
The Germany Emergency Committee was established in March 1933 to coordinate the British Quaker response to the crisis. Quaker assistance was not just made available to victims of Nazi aggression. The Spanish Civil War displaced hundreds of thousands of civilians between 1936 and 1939.
Quakers provided aid for those on both sides of the conflict and then, when the general Francisco Franco’s fascist regime won the war, they provided support, and in some cases escape opportunities, for those refugees unable to return to Spain. In an example of good-begetting-good refugee camps set up by Quakers for Spanish refugees in the south of France were later used to house Jewish deportees.
Owing to the established Quaker presence in the camps it was possible to work with Jewish groups and the French Resistance to smuggle hundreds of children out of the camps and into local safe houses.
Quaker boarding schools in Britain played a crucial role in supporting and educating refugee children during this period. Quaker funding allowed two schools, Bunce Court and Stoatley Rough, to be evacuated from Germany with a total of around 300 pupils. The twelve existing Quaker boarding schools in England welcomed Jewish pupils and children with parents who were politically opposed to Nazism.
Some parents struggled to pay school fees, particularly after limitations on Jews transferring currency were imposed, so schools found bursaries and waived fees. Czech schoolboy Karel Reisz, later the famous film director of Saturday Night and Sunday Morning, was accepted free of charge at Leighton Park School after his elder brother Paul pleaded with the headmaster Edgar Castle to save his twelve-year-old brother from the approaching Nazis. In total, up to 500 refugee children were educated at Quaker boarding schools in the 1930s and 1940s.
Faith in action
The impact of Quaker assistance on refugees was profound. Many of the refugees alive today credit Quakers with saving their lives by organising transports out of fascist Europe. One refugee, now in her eighties, recollects: ‘No-one wanted us. Even the British government was not interested.’ Refugees who made their own way to Britain were faced with a situation in which they had few friends, little money and no prospects. In those circumstances, the support of Quaker groups and individuals was critical to helping refugees adapt and assimilate. Quaker refugee rescue operations worked due to the efforts of dedicated individuals who were supported by a wider community of Friends willing to welcome strangers into their homes, donate money or petition on their behalf. There were only around 20,000 Friends in Britain in the 1930s but it is fair to say that, of approximately 70,000 refugees who found refuge in Britain, at least 20,000 were supported by Quakers.
Bertha Bracey
Quaker refugee relief efforts depended on collaborative efforts. However, one individual name recurs over and over in archival sources and in the stories people tell.
Bertha Bracey held various official roles during the 1930s and 1940s, including secretary of the German Emergency Committee and chairman of the Central Department for Interned Refugees. A highly intelligent and driven woman, she recognised the urgency of refugee rescue very early on and assumed a great level of personal involvement in individual cases. By 1939, ‘the staircases at Friends House were blocked with lines of people waiting to be seen by Bertha Bracey and her [eighty] fellow-workers.’
She was part of the Quaker and Jewish delegation that successfully appealed to the then home secretary Samuel Hoare on 14 November 1938 to allow 10,000 unaccompanied Jewish children into Britain. Some sources credit her as the lynchpin of this delegation.
Bracey worked tirelessly throughout the 1930s to aid the flight of refugees from Europe. In 1935 she suffered a prolonged illness through exhaustion but returned to her hectic schedule after a year’s absence. She was a staunch believer in the importance of community aid efforts as the main bulwark against persecution. As she wrote in 1954, ‘the thunders of politicians are liable at times to drown the words of wisdom that fall from the lips of sober judges and conscientious citizens.’
Rose Holmes, postgraduate researcher at the University of Sussex, would welcome any recollections or documents on Quaker refugee rescue during this period.
Comments
I recall reading of a team from the FWCC providing tea and care for the thousands of Marseilles Jews deported via the train station in 1943. Rather than oppose the Nazi/Vichy authorities in deporting the Jewish inhabitants to ~you know where~, they chose to not ‘rock the boat’ lest they be denied the opportunity to provide tea and care for condemned Jews of Marseilles. I’d happily discuss this further with Rose. If she wishes, the Webmaster can pass her details of the e-mail addy attached to my log-in.
By A Mac G on 13th May 2011 - 22:39
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